Towards an e-government enterprise architecture framework for developing economies

Abstract

The growth and uptake of e-government in developing economies is still affected by the interoperability challenge, which can be perceived as an orchestration of several issues that imply the existence of gaps in methods used for e-government planning and implementation. To a great extent, various counterparts in developed economies have succeeded in addressing the method-related gaps by developing e-government enterprise architectures, as blueprints for guiding e-government initiatives in a holistic and manageable way. However, existing e-government enterprise architectures are country-specific to appropriately serve their intended purpose, while enterprise architecture frameworks or methods are generic to accommodate several enterprise contexts. The latter do not directly accommodate the unique peculiarities of e-government efforts. Thus, a detailed method is lacking that can be adapted by developing economies to develop e-government enterprise architectures that fit their contexts. To address the gap, this article presents research that adopted a Design Science approach to develop an e-Government Enterprise Architecture Framework (EGEAF), as an explicit method for guiding the design of e-government enterprise architectures in a developing economy. EGEAF was designed by extending the Architecture Development Method of The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF ADM) to address requirements for developing interoperable e-government solutions in a developing economy. EGEAF was evaluated using two scenarios in the Ugandan context, and findings indicate that it is feasible; its design is understandable to enable its adoption and extension to accommodate requirements for developing interoperable e-government solutions in other developing economies.